Semifinal showdown: Sporting Jax women meet Carolina in playoffs
· Yahoo Sports
Ahead of the First Coast's first-ever women's soccer playoff, the tactical chess game has begun. And Sporting Club Jacksonville coach Stacey Balaam is ready for it.
"That's the challenge for coaches," Balaam said. "That's what makes our job fun."
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One week after Carolina Ascent FC knocked them from the top spot in the Gainbridge Super League, Sporting Jax gets an instant rematch in a playoff semifinal that will make Northeast Florida history.
Kickoff is 5 p.m. Sunday, May 24, at the University of North Florida's Hodges Stadium. There, a win launches the first-year Sporting Jax women, who led the league for much of the season, into the May 30 championship game against Lexington SC or Dallas Trinity.
But to get there, they must overcome the team that stung them last time out.
Will Sporting Jax respond with a lineup switch or two? Does Carolina try to anticipate that with changes of their own? How does Sporting Jax adjust in defense, where an injury to Julia Lester (out since April 4) has coincided with a mini-slump of three losses in five games? The chess game is on.
"They came out with a really good game plan, and they caused us some problems," Balaam said of Carolina's performance last week. "We've got to look at that and how we can rectify it."
A week ago, Carolina and Sporting Jax didn't appear to be on collision course. Jacksonville held first place, with the Players' Shield regular season trophy in reach, and would have sealed a playoff meeting with Dallas by earning at least a tie on May 16.
But when Sporting Jax let an early lead slip away in a 3-1 loss to Carolina, and when Lexington SC defeated Tampa Bay 1-0 on a highly dubious 90th-minute penalty kick — video clearly showed no contact inside the penalty area on the supposed foul — Lexington vaulted to the No. 1 seed and left Sporting Jax in its fifth meeting with Carolina for 2025-26.
The contrasts are many. Carolina has scored 15 goals fewer than Sporting Jax, and has no individual scorers with more than five. But they frustrate opponents with the league's second-ranked defense and goalkeeper Sydney Martinez, a Savannah-area native who played for the Jacksonville Armada youth system and represents Puerto Rico in international matches.
Before last week, Sporting Jax had gone 2-0-1 against the Ascent.
"I think that they had a little bit of a different style of play. A couple of the girls that came in at the winter break didn't really get too many minutes the last time we played them, so this was kind of the first time playing their full squad," forward Paige Kenton said.
Sporting Jax normally has no problem with creating scoring chances. They field three of the league's top five scorers (Baylee DeSmit and Ashlyn Puerta with 12 each, Kenton with 10) and four of the five assist leaders (Puerta, Kenton, Sophia Boman and Meg Hughes each with seven).
The test now: making all those attacking pieces add up to a postseason checkmate.
"We always talk about how every detail matters," Boman said. "So I think just staying locked in will give us the best shot."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Sporting Jax women's soccer in USL Super League playoff debut